Brian Armstrong posted this today:
"Very soon there are going to be more AI agents than humans making transactions."
"They can't open a bank account, but they can own a crypto wallet. Think about it."
Here's what he's getting at:
Banks require KYC. Know Your Customer. You provide a name, an ID, a face, a physical address...
AI agents have none of those things.
It's not that banks are hostile to AI agents. It's that banks were architecturally designed around one assumption:
Every economic participant is a human being, or a business backed by humans.
That assumption is now wrong.
Coinbase launched Agentic Wallets in February. A crypto wallet spins up with a private key. No identity check. No address on file. No human required.
An AI agent can be operational and transacting in seconds.
A bank account for the same agent would be impossible.
Brian's point isn't that crypto is better than banking. It's that banking literally cannot serve this market.
Earlier today, CZ made the same prediction:
AI agents will make 1 million times more payments than humans. He pointed to BNB Chain's EIP-3009 upgrade, which lets agents transact without holding gas tokens.
Two of the most prominent CEOs in crypto made the same call on the same day.
Both are pointing at the same gap in the financial system.
The banks built for humans. Crypto built for anyone with a private key.
Soon, most of those private keys will belong to machines.
There have recently been some discussions on the ongoing role of L2s in the Ethereum ecosystem, especially in the face of two facts:
* L2s' progress to stage 2 (and, secondarily, on interop) has been far slower and more difficult than originally expected
* L1 itself is scaling, fees are very low, and gaslimits are projected to increase greatly in 2026
Both of these facts, for their own separate reasons, mean that the original vision of L2s and their role in Ethereum no longer makes sense, and we need a new path.
First, let us recap the original vision. Ethereum needs to scale. The definition of "Ethereum scaling" is the existence of large quantities of block space that is backed by the full faith and credit of Ethereum - that is, block space where, if you do things (including with ETH) inside that block space, your activities are guaranteed to be valid, uncensored, unreverted, untouched, as long as Ethereum itself functions. If you create a 10000 TPS EVM where its connection to L1 is mediated by a multisig bridge, then you are not scaling Ethereum.
This vision no longer makes sense. L1 does not need L2s to be "branded shards", because L1 is itself scaling. And L2s are not able or willing to satisfy the properties that a true "branded shard" would require. I've even seen at least one explicitly saying that they may never want to go beyond stage 1, not just for technical reasons around ZK-EVM safety, but also because their customers' regulatory needs require them to have ultimate control. This may be doing the right thing for your customers. But it should be obvious that if you are doing this, then you are not "scaling Ethereum" in the sense meant by the rollup-centric roadmap. But that's fine! it's fine because Ethereum itself is now scaling directly on L1, with large planned increases to its gas limit this year and the years ahead.
We should stop thinking about L2s as literally being "branded shards" of Ethereum, with the social status and responsibilities that this entails. Instead, we can think of L2s as being a full spectrum, which includes both chains backed by the full faith and credit of Ethereum with various unique properties (eg. not just EVM), as well as a whole array of options at different levels of connection to Ethereum, that each person (or bot) is free to care about or not care about depending on their needs.
What would I do today if I were an L2?
* Identify a value add other than "scaling". Examples: (i) non-EVM specialized features/VMs around privacy, (ii) efficiency specialized around a particular application, (iii) truly extreme levels of scaling that even a greatly expanded L1 will not do, (iv) a totally different design for non-financial applications, eg. social, identity, AI, (v) ultra-low-latency and other sequencing properties, (vi) maybe built-in oracles or decentralized dispute resolution or other "non-computationally-verifiable" features
* Be stage 1 at the minimum (otherwise you really are just a separate L1 with a bridge, and you should just call yourself that) if you're doing things with ETH or other ethereum-issued assets
* Support maximum interoperability with Ethereum, though this will differ for each one (eg. what if you're not EVM, or even not financial?)
From Ethereum's side, over the past few months I've become more convinced of the value of the native rollup precompile, particuarly once we have enshrined ZK-EVM proofs that we need anyway to scale L1. This is a precompile that verifies a ZK-EVM proof, and it's "part of Ethereum", so (i) it auto-upgrades along with Ethereum, and (ii) if the precompile has a bug, Ethereum will hard-fork to fix the bug.
The native rollup precompile would make full, security-council-free, EVM verification accessible. We should spend much more time working out how to design it in such a way that if your L2 is "EVM plus other stuff", then the native rollup precompile would verify the EVM, and you only have to bring your own prover for the "other stuff" (eg. Stylus). This might involve a canonical way of exposing a lookup table between contract call inputs and outputs, and letting you provide your own values to the lookup table (that you would prove separately).
This would make it easy to have safe, strong, trustless interoperability with Ethereum. It also enables synchronous composability (see: https://t.co/9jy6v1X6Fw and https://t.co/gZmu3YjebM ). And from there, it's each L2's choice exactly what they want to build. Don't just "extend L1", figure out something new to add.
This of course means that some will add things that are trust-dependent, or backdoored, or otherwise insecure; this is unavoidable in a permissionless ecosystem where developers have freedom. Our job should make to make it clear to users what guarantees they have, and to build up the strongest Ethereum that we can.
Today @jpmorgan, the world's largest bank by market cap per @WSJ, announced they're launching their first ever tokenized money market fund—MONY—on Ethereum.
The firm is seeding the fund with $100M of its own capital before opening to outside investors on Tuesday.
Miss Devconnect already? Same 🥹
Here’s the Ethereum World's Fair recap video 🎞️ One week, 14k+ people, 500+ events, and thousands of different experiences.
Full blog with numbers + highlights below.
Tokenization is shaping the next evolution of global markets. In @TheEconomist, Larry Fink and Rob Goldstein discuss how tokenization can modernize market infrastructure, enhancing efficiency, transparency, and access by connecting traditional and digital finance. Read more:
Truebit Verified Compliance is the financial control plane for digital assets.
No more 'trust us' compliance.
Every policy decision now comes with cryptographic proof that regulators and auditors can verify independently.
The future of tokenized finance is verifiable.
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we planned to launch our open-weight model next week.
we are delaying it; we need time to run additional safety tests and review high-risk areas. we are not yet sure how long it will take us.
while we trust the community will build great things with this model, once weights are out, they can’t be pulled back. this is new for us and we want to get it right.
sorry to be the bearer of bad news; we are working super hard!
@ShaanVP That’s me at 3 yrs old! I was treated with homeopathy then. Although I’m an old lady now with several digestive intolerances and sensibilities, I could make it!
LO CONSEGUIMOS! CAMPEONES #DAKAR2024 💪🏻
Hemos sufrido, hemos luchado pero sobre todo, hemos disfrutado.
¡Qué gran sensación cruzar la meta y poder celebrar con todos aquellos que lo han hecho posible! Gracias de corazón
WE DID IT! #DAKAR2024 CHAMPIONS💪🏻
We have struggled, we have fought, but above all, we have enjoyed it.
What a great feeling to cross the finish line and be able to celebrate with all those who have made it possible! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts
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@audisport@LucasCruz74
#CarlosSainz